Loving the Lost Boys: Some Thoughts on Boyhood and Reading

I walked up to the registration table at a conference for children’s book writers and illustrators. The lobby was filled with teachers talking to one another about their schools, their principals, and common core. A few talked over their manuscripts. The woman behind the table was cheerful and warm. She smiled at me like I was a beloved nephew. I signed the necessary papers, grabbed my information packet, and put on my name tag.

“One last thing,” she said. “Is this your first time attending the conference?”

“Yes,” I said.

She reached over to a pile of beaded mardi-gras necklaces, the type they throw from parade floats in New Orleans. “You’ll need to wear this.” She handed me the necklace with a smile. There was not a trace of slyness. Her face was as pleasant and happy as if she were handing me keys to a new car.

“No thank you,” I said.

She drew a breath in surprise, and her face hardened slightly. “You need to wear it so that people know it’s your first time attending.” She was being patient with me.

“That’s okay,” I said smiling.

She wasn’t having it. “No. You have to wear it,” she said beads swaying in her extended fist.

What had happened to her face? No longer was I a beloved nephew. She was looking at me like … like what? Ah. She was looking at me like I was a student. I took the necklace and left the table.

I attended a session on the elements of the YA novel. The speaker said writers would be wise to model their books on the movie Dirty Dancing. I am not making this up. Did I mention there weren’t very many men present?

The attendees were overwhelmingly female school-teachers who hoped to get their books published. It is possible that the attendees at this regional conference did not adequately represent the twin institutions of education and publishing. Not all boys are educated by women who think that shiny beaded necklaces are a mandatory accessory, or who think that Dirty Dancing is a cultural treasure, but some boys are, and it’s a problem. Do Youth Publishing and Education alienate boys?

Consider this:

The U.S. Department of Education reading tests for the last 30 years show boys scoring worse than girls in every age group, every year. Boys also perform worse than girls in writing according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. A survey of students in 2012 revealed that 53% of girls strongly agreed that “writing is one of my favorite activities.” However, only 35% of boys felt the same. Because students first learn to read and then read to learn, literacy problems beget broad academic failure. In other words, boys who fail to read, fail to learn.

There are several obstacles that prevent boys from becoming readers:

First, there are very few male teachers in lower education. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports year by year that men make up 18-19% of Elementary & Middle school teachers. Some schools have almost no men at all. I’ve experienced this first hand. I once painted murals in a school that had one male gym teacher and some male janitorial staff. The principal, office staff and all other teachers were female. This situation is increasingly common in elementary schools across the country. If children don’t see their dads reading, they are unlikely to experience male reading modeled at school.

Second, boys can easily be treated as defective girls in female-dominant environments. The old saying is true, “To the worm in a radish the whole world is a radish.” Feminine environments can assume feminine priorities without recognizing them as anything other than “the way children should act.”

Peg Tyre is a self-described progressive feminist. She was raised on the Reviving Ophelia literature of the 90’s, but as a mother of boys and an education reporter she began to research the gender gap in education. Surprised that boys, not girls, were failing, she wrote a book compiling her findings. Tyre tells this story about her conversations with seven-year-old boys in a lecture at Elmhurst College:

“I said, ‘so guys, what is it with you and reading?’ … They were like, well to tell you the truth, reading is kind of girly and I was like, ‘wow that’s so defensive.’ Right? They’re bad at it and so they immediately describe it as ‘girly.’ Where does that come from—that rapid defensiveness? And I kind of judged those kids… So then we tramped back into the classroom, and they were making individual selections of their books, and I looked around the room and I suddenly had the eyes of a tortoise [the boy reading group name], and I realized that the books in the teacher’s classroom were overwhelmingly books about girls. They had pinkish kind of girlish covers…They were girls in jeopardy stories, and I suddenly realized why the boys were saying reading was girly, because man, reading is girly.”

Just as girls can be alienated in predominantly male environments (trash collection or lumber jackery for example), boys can be alienated in predominantly female environments (elementary school).

The third obstacle to boy literacy is the growing reluctance of schools to even classify gender. It’s becoming politically awkward to perceive gender as anything but a state of mind—something to be slipped on and off like a sweater. Christians who believe that gender is a core human characteristic (“male and female created he them”) are considered backwards or oppressive. In his book Why Boys Fail, Richard Whitmire writes of an investigation into a possible gender gap at Illinois’ schools. It was incredibly hard to conduct the investigation because members of the relevant committee were uncomfortable with the premise of gender.

Whitmire records the comments of Diane Fisher, a clinical psychologist and a member of the committee:

“There was an enormous amount of resistance to us looking at this,’ she recalls. ‘The others saw it as a hot-button issue and they didn’t want to use the word ‘gender’. They wanted to look at learning differences in general and not make it into a gender issue. I think it was really political discomfort for them. And a number of these parents didn’t really believe these gender differences exist.”

The task force proceeded despite the opposition. Their first task was to question the teachers to get their input. A staggering 85% of teachers anticipated no gender achievement gap. Whitmire records the task force’s findings:

“In June 2006 the task force released its 107-page report. In stark contrast to what the teachers thought was happening, the task force found ‘surprising’ gender gaps. In grades five through eight, girls had higher grades than boys in every core subject, including math.”

The American Council for Coeducational Schooling maintains that even calling children “boys and girls” furthers gender stereotyping and engrains sexism in our society. For people with this belief, it is impossible to under-serve boys because they insist it is impossible to identify boys. You can see the trouble.

Let me add one more point on this score: The failure to recognize male distinctness leads to a marginalization of femininity. I just read a sample reading from a 2011, fourth grade National literacy test about a girl wrestler named Daisy. A story for fourth grade boys about a girl wrestler? Why don’t boys enjoy reading?

Daisy is super tough, of course, and she loves the smell of sweat socks, and she outwrestles a cocky boy with muscles and pours contempt on a coach who calls her Honey.

“‘Have you wrestled before, honey?’

“He didn’t call any of the boys honey.’Yes sir,” I answer through clenched teeth.”

A reading program with these priorities tell boys that masculinity is not their special possession. It also denies that there are ways to treasure the differences between boys and girls bestowed by the Creator. Additionally, it suggests that women should receive no particular honor, no gentleness, no care or protection from men. This is obviously bad instruction for boys. But, isn’t it also corrosive for girls? Stories like the one above tell girls who treasure femininity that they’re doing it wrong. They also assert that the way a girl achieves power is through the imitation of men. Am I alone in thinking that this is somewhat insulting to women? Surely not.

After the birth of my second child, I was amazed at my wife. Childbirth occasions a co-mingling of vulnerability and strength that is distinctly female. Courage in the course of the ordinary woman’s life is varied, complex, and abundant. It should be widely celebrated in literature. The desire to shoehorn women into more masculine archetypes bespeaks an embarrassment toward the riches of femininity. It smacks of an insecurity toward women as characters and betrays an ingratitude for the glory of our distinct creation as men and women. It’s also boring.

So look for books that embrace the romance of masculinity and femininity as separate gifts. A proper respect for women is essential in reading material for boys and girls both.

Lastly, publishers themselves provide a few obstacles to male literacy. Simply put, publishers target girls more than boys because girls share and recommend books. Boys typically read in isolation from one another. Boy-friendly publishing brings greater financial risks than girl-friendly publishing. Consequently much of the publishers’ energy goes into promoting Princess’ series, Paranormal Romance, or Modernizations of Fairy Tales. This is easily rectified. If books that honor boyhood sell a bunch of copies, publishers will produce more. This means that parents have to be discerning consumers and reward publishers who take boy-friendly risks.

Parents can no longer assume that well-meaning sweet teachers will usher their boys into a love for books. Fathers must model reading. Schools should recruit male teachers or empower female teachers with strategies to reach boys, and we should look for ways to honor the differences between boys and girls so that we can display a proper gratitude for God’s good gifts.

Get Story Warren in Your Inbox

Comments

This is a great article and so true. Can you follow up with a list of great boy books which affirm boyhood/young manhood? I have a 7th grade son who enjoys reading, but I’m always on the lookout for literature which encourages him in being the boy–and becoming the man– God made him.

These are on the Books for Boys list mentioned already, but I highly recommend both the Wingfeather Saga books and the entire auto-biographical series by Ralph Moody. The first book is called Little Britches. You see him grow up from a young boy, become the Man of the Family (second book), all the way up into early adulthood.

Here is a list we just recently discovered by Cindy Rollins: https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/books-cultivating-honorable-boys
My 5th grader hadn’t read Brian Jacques’ Redwall series, so now he is flying through it and talking my ear off about all the great characters and plot twists. He also loved the Ralph Moody Little Britches series.

This is insightful and helpful on every count, and THANK YOU for exposing the insidious idea that women who embrace femininity are “doing it wrong” unless they imitate men. Your description of how administrations don’t even want to identify boys and girls as boys and girls for the sake of assessing how they’re doing reminds me of a similar issue with race. Most social researchers now recognize that if we refuse to look at racial and socioeconomic achievement differences, in the name of color-blindness or being politically correct, we’ll miss the reality and the nature of real disparities between different groups, and we’ll be helpless to make necessary changes. Same with gender. If we’re going to pretend that gender isn’t even real, we’ll miss the big stinky elephant in the room, the fact that boys are being treated as “defective girls” and it’s affecting their entire trajectory.

Thanks Kathleen! I have two girls and I am now very sensitive to literature that promotes interchangeability between boys and girls. It seems unhealthy to assert to girls that they can’t have respect unless they are one of the guys.

Oh, believe me, I have. 🙂 My dad got the idea for my name from a book by George MacDonald, a writer who, I suspect, would have shared your frustration with the newbie name tag (and might have thrown it in the patient registrar’s face).

I fear I may have been harsh with the poor woman working the table. The fact is, she was very well-meaning and sweet natured. And that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? Even the sweetest natured teacher can unknowingly teach boys that their values are second tiered–that their gender is a burden–that their presence is chore.

This is beautifully written! It makes sense that elementary schools are becoming more and more feminine environments, but you do a great job of exploring why that is happening and what we can do about it.

As a mother of (almost) four daughters, reading is very girly at our house, but I still hunt for books with the qualities you mentioned, because it’s not enough to read books about girls: I want my daughters to get to know boys who know how to treat girls well. And as the librarian at my daughters’ small school, I make a point of looking for books that will appeal to boys (The Green Ember is definitely on our shelves!).

Thank you Thea! I’m glad you’re a librarian. So many schools are cutting libraries and fewer kids are choosing books from curated selections. A good librarian is a huge advantage for childhood literacy.

And what about girls treating boys well? It is very common hitting boys, beating up boys and kicking boys in he balls. Happens much more then the other way round. No respect from girls to boys at all. Girls hurt boys physically and mentally much, much more then biys do with girls.

Zach, wonderful article. I have written for years about the “lost Boys” phenomenon, but hadn’t really connected it to children’s literature before as you have. I remember when my 30-year-old son was in elementary school, all of his classmates were really tight, regardless of gender. As parents we thought this was wonderful – mutual respect among boys and girls, coed birthday parties, no talk of “cooties” as my generation of boys said about girls, etc. But then as they grew up there was this androgenous fear to get serious about growing up and becoming men who would take on their natural role to protect and care for women, at least that was the case with some of the boys who did not have the benefit of a Christ-centered church. As 20 and 30-something men, these lost boys still wanted to hang out with their “buds”, play video games, skateboard, go to movies, but never learning how to settle down and take responsibility to take a wife and raise up godly seed for the kingdom of God. It may have been secular, social engineering, even way back then. Anyway, thanks for your insights. They are very helpful. I totally concur with the Ralph Moody recommendations.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. There is one interesting side-note about video games. They currently seem to have the lock on the male imagination. Common to most is a protagonist who risks, goes on a quest, acquires a skill, channels aggression to a noble end, and maintains strong goals.
These are also the attributes of books boys used to read, but that are now infrequently published: King Arthur, Robin Hood, Siegfried, Guy of Warwick, Roland, Davy Crockett, etc.
It may be that low literacy and video game attachments are the product of laziness, but it also might be that video games manifest masculine values whereas publishing wars against them. If the latter case is true, is it any wonder that boys prefer playing video games to reading?

One of the things that is most concerning is that there is starting to be body of evidence that pixels, whether in the form of Television, video games, smart phones, tablets, etc. have an adverse effect on concentration. Research shows that watching pixel-generated video mimics the fight or flight response in the brain and may be a leading cause for ADHD. Videos are no substitute for books in the imagination of boys or girls, adults or children. I heard over 15 years ago that watching television over time can actually decrease a person’s IQ. Whatever eye-hand fine motor skills that video games improve in our young people, they probably will adversely affect their thinking skills.

Great article. Check out the Wilder Good series by SJ Dahlstrom. It’s realistic adventure stories about a boy leathing authentic manhood from the men AND women in his life. No vampires or superpowers here. Just life lessons that are sometimes hard raw, but real and joyful too. In the vein of Old Yeller. http://WWW.WILDERGOOD. COM

This was a great read! I hadn’t thought about how the (lack of) gender distinction (and what the gender-majority environment is) influences boys’ desire to read. My son is very young, but I am already thinking about his reading life as he grows. I plan on reading aloud to him and my daughter for as long as they’ll let me. Do you have any suggestions, or know of resources, for approaching read-alouds with both boys and girls together?

The books that keep coming up in conversation with parents are these: Little House on the Prairie books (Farmer Boy is electrifying for boys) and Little Britches by Ralph Moody. I would add the Moffat books (particularly Rufus M.), and Henry and Ribsy are also good places to start. If you haven’t already, you might dig around Sarah Mackenzie’s site amongstlovelythings.com and get some other good recommendations for read alouds.

Such a great article that really pinpoints a huge problem. As a mom of a 4-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl, I want them to fall in love with reading, but I realize more and more that we have to ignite that fire with books that appeal to their God-given inclinations. I want my son to see heroes that embody masculine character and bravery, and my daughter to see ladies that are heroic in a totally different way. Thanks for the article!